Two weeks removed from August’s rally, mid-September is a good checkpoint for whether the move has stabilized into a new range or is still working through its aftermath. Here are five metrics worth checking this week.
1. Exchange reserves
Still the most important supply signal on the board. Whether the drain that defined the summer has stabilized, continued, or reversed says more about the medium-term outlook than any single price candle. See Bitcoin Exchange Reserves Explained.
2. NUPL zone
Checking which named zone Net Unrealized Profit/Loss currently sits in, hope/fear, optimism, belief, or euphoria, gives a fast read on where market-wide sentiment landed after the rally. For the full framework alongside its close cousin, see MVRV Z-Score vs NUPL Explained.
3. Short-term holder SOPR
Whether the newest cohort of buyers is realizing gains, realizing losses, or roughly breaking even on their spent coins remains one of the fastest ways to gauge whether recent buyers are still in control of the market’s near-term direction.
4. Puell Multiple
Checking whether miner revenue, elevated by the rally, has cooled back toward neutral or is still stretched. A multiple that stays elevated for an extended period is worth flagging. See Puell Multiple Explained.
5. Realized cap growth
New capital entering the market shows up as growth in realized cap, the aggregate cost basis of all coins. Slowing realized cap growth after a rally can be an early sign that the pool of new buyers willing to pay up at higher prices is thinning out, even while price itself is still holding.
Why realized cap growth earns a slot on this list
Most weekly checklists lean entirely on valuation and supply. Realized cap growth adds a third dimension: how much new capital is actually settling into the asset. Because realized cap values every coin at the price it last moved, a rising realized cap means coins are changing hands at higher levels and that new money is being committed rather than simply passed around. Price can rise on thin volume without that happening. When it does happen, the advance has something underneath it.
The mid September context
The reference point for this week remains August’s move: a rally into a three month high near $81,400 on August 28, a settle back into the high $70,000s, sentiment in the high 60s on the Fear and Greed Index, and futures open interest up roughly 13 percent on the month without funding becoming extreme. Two weeks past that, the question is no longer whether the rally happened but whether the supply picture that supported it is still intact. Rallies that hold tend to show quiet reserves, steady short term holder behaviour and a realized cap that keeps grinding higher. Rallies that fail usually show at least one of those breaking first.
How to use the list
Write one word per metric, compare it to last week’s line, and pay attention to what changed rather than to any single reading. Direction beats level for all five. If you want to build the habit without a paid data subscription, every chart here is available on the free platforms listed in our roundup of free onchain tools.
As always, no single metric here is a signal on its own. Read together, they are a reasonable weekly gut-check on whether the market’s underlying structure is keeping pace with its price.
Common questions
Do these five metrics ever contradict each other? Frequently, and that is useful. Agreement across all five is rare and tends to occur near genuine extremes rather than in ordinary weeks.
Is weekly the right cadence? For these metrics, yes. They are built on slow moving supply behaviour, so daily checking mostly adds noise and anxiety without adding information.
What is missing from this list? Miner health beyond the Puell Multiple, and the wider set of cycle signals covered in our onchain cycle indicator guide.
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